The IDF just announced that they've discovered a Hamas command and control center under Jimmy Wales' khouse. It'll be dealt with accordingly.

The US WANTS to be in those bases because it gives them a lot of soft power in foreign relationships

I'd say that military bases within European countries is the definition of projecting hard power. If 40 000 soldiers in a military base are called 'soft power', what's hard power then? Nuking the city?

I think you misunderstand the method of imposing the hardship. The police will be better paid and there to impose the planned hardship on the ordinary people, including many of the people who always vote for him.

It's honestly rather strange and depressing watching the US from the outside. I have rarely seen the most downtrodden segment of the population being so gung ho about the worst parts of the system that's been oppressing them their whole lives. It's amazing to me to see so many super patriotic black people for example. How? For what? Why would you blindly defend the same structures that've been oppressing you for centuries? It'd be less depressing and more funny if it wasn't for the massive destructive power these people get access to when they win, power that they subsequently unleash on the rest of the world.

FlyingSquid is a pathetic human being, who seems to have little else in their life than banning anyone they disagree with. So, just a reddit mod. Question is, why would Lemmy have a chance to grow if it insists on having the same shitty structure as reddit, only with a fraction of a fraction of content that's available on reddit.

That's a problem for the Israeli state to solve, not me. There have been many ways in my view, but that's not relevant to the question of commiting genocide. I don't need to be an expert in order to categorically oppose genocide. There's not a thing you can say that the Palestinians have done, real or imaginary, which would make a genocide defendable to a human being in touch with their humanity.

There's no reason at all to discuss anything other than stopping the genocide in the current context. You don't discuss possible long term solutions while a genocide is ongoing. After Israel stops commiting genocide, there'll perhaps be room to discuss what to do going forward, but while it's ongoing, there's only one thing worth discussing: How to stop Israel commiting genocide.

If a people are being genocided and you still have difficulties seeing the black and white clearly, that's on you. It couldn't be more black or white than this, the side doing the genocide is always black until it stops doing the genocide. I'm a simple man, doing genocide=black in any context, always.

No replies on the holding the door and smiling being the sign of a swindler? That actually sounds like you live in an exceptionally hostile place. I'm swedish, as in people not exactly known for showing a lot of warmth to each other in public, and I always hold the door, and smile at people very often. The smiling part might be somewhat unusual here in Sweden too, but not unusual as in bad or a sign of a swindler. Most people seem to appreciate these behaviors. Either that or I'm absolutely delusional and everyone secretly views me as a swindler ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And you complain about pro Israel accounts getting banned. Literally justifying the murder of children should be banable no matter what county you're supporting. Despicable behavior that everyone now sadly expects from rabid genocide supporters.

That's not a Västgötaspets, looks more like a mixed breed.

It's definitely not a good precedent for governments to shut down communication platforms. But free speech is for all, and Twitter censors speech it doesn't like, mainly left wing opinions. So I'm not going to act like free speech is the main issue here, even if I dislike governments shutting down or blocking platforms.

You know that Twitter isn't banned in Turkiye and India because they complied with their requests for censure, since you know, those are right wing governments run by strong men that the Apartheid beby likes? Funny how free speech becomes the issue just when the requests come from governments whose ideology don't align with this particular clown's. GTFO with the free speech posturing, if you're defending the free speech of a platform where it's fine to harass trans people but you're banned if you correctly call someone cis gendered. Free speech my ass, Twitter is a right wing cess pool, not a beacon of free discourse.

There's evidence of apple cultivation in the middle east from around 5000 years ago as far as I know.

He ran in 88 and 2008, ran as a vice president 2008 and 2012, skipped 2016 and ran again 2020 and 2024. I'd say it lines up, Biden always wanted to be president, and his only regret seems to be that he was persuaded not to run in 2016.

Here I thought I was ancient because it was combat. Seems like there are many of us old farts around here.

"ingrained in the middle eastern mentality"? I'd have a look at my own mentality if I was this comfortable generalizing several hundreds of millions of people like that. It seems like you have disdain for both victim and perpetrator irrespective of which in your mind is which, because they're middle eastern. Weird.

Meanwhile here in Sweden, everyone's criminal record is public, and even available to search online. Unless the crime is something minor punished with a fine. It's really ridiculous, everything is publicly available online, like addresses, phone numbers, the cars or pets people own. Unless you have a protected identity, it's all available to everyone online. I tried to apply for a protected identity on account of being a public servant that is involved in making decisions many people very much dislike. But I couldn't provide a concrete threat so it was denied. It's like the system is still geared towards pre-internet times. The system itself in fact doxxes every resident in the country.

Jfc, a media outlet asks a presidential campaign a question, and the answer from the official spokesperson is "your phone must be fucked up." It's amazing how fast standards seem to be unraveling within the US political system. Even random student groups have better judgement in their communication with the media, this is like a spokesperson for a shitty frat house talking to Mother Jones.

Spent a year in the south/south east of Africa, and different variations of fermented maize beer were the most common alcoholic drink among locals.

Thobwa is the Malawian/Zambian version, while umqombothi is the South African one.

If so, then it's just as inaccurate and ridiculous to say that Uganda, India, Algeria and Morocco have regressed in their development. What part of that do you consider controversial? Are you unwilling/unable to have a negative attitude towards the current regime, while also acknowledging that they've done more to develop the country than the Pahlavis ever did? There's no contradiction at all in that in my view, those are just the facts. Iran has raised its HDI by +40% in the last 35 years, going from 0.577 in 1990 to almost 0.8 in 2018, with the international average for countries with high HDI being 0.75. Iran went from non-existent research output during the Shah's reign to being number 15 in the World, placing 4th in Asia after India, Japan and South Korea. All of this happened within the framework of the "theocratic shitheads", despite the existence of socially repressive laws, and not during the Shah's time when the laws were more relaxed and all of the West supported his regime in any way possible. He was just uninterested in channeling that support into things beneficial to the people of Iran, and suffered the consequences of that by steering the country into revolution. So just comparing a picture of a woman in a miniskirt in the seventies to the mandatory hijab of today and concluding that the country has regressed in general seems like the most uncharitable and shallow analysis possible. It's not helpful in understanding the World at all, and leads to foolish slogans like "they hate us for our freedom", which in turn leads to disastrous decisions like the invasion of Iraq.

I don't know why it should be so difficult to acknowledge that there are different degrees of bad, and the record suggests that the current "shitheads" are still far superior to the former. Nothing I wrote was meant to imply that the current regime doesn't do a lot of bad stuff, there are no governments that don't do bad stuff. To make sense of international politics at all, I think it's essential to be able to compare different degrees of bad and grade on a curve. Just pointing and saying it's all bad doesn't seem like the best of ideas to me. But to each his own.